


The Answer is at the Bottom

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e08 Father's Day, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-15
Updated: 2009-12-15
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor looks for answers in all the wrong places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Answer is at the Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [](http://anepidemic.livejournal.com/profile)[anepidemic](http://anepidemic.livejournal.com/). This is my entry for round 2 at [](http://storm-and-wolf.livejournal.com/profile)[storm_and_wolf](http://storm-and-wolf.livejournal.com/). My prompt was my favorite one liner from W.C. Fields: _It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it._ It's not where I was intending to go when I started, but sometimes that's okay.

The Doctor eyed the glass of umber liquid suspiciously and gave it a quick zap with the sonic screwdriver before taking a sip. He was fairly certain the Colophonian bartender was using one of his four arms to add more to the drinks than ice, though the way he flipped bottles and tossed glasses was a bit entertaining, if under appreciated for the locale. It was to be expected in place like this, parked in the middle of an intergalactic truck stop and teeming with all sorts of disreputable characters.

The paradox and the reapers had done a number on the Tardis, and shortly after they’d left 1987 Earth they’d been forced to stop for a power up and a few spare parts. The Procyon system, one of three stars comprising the Winter Triangle in the constellation Canis Minoris, was the closest outpost, but in the early 34th century it was more like a Wild West town than a legitimate piece of civilization.

He still wasn’t entirely sure how he ended up here, but it seemed as good a place as any to sit, have a stiff drink and brood for a while. He was good at brooding. He was also quite stellar at hurting the people closest to him. Of course these days there was only one person close to him, and instead of being there for her in the aftermath of losing her father for the second time in her life, he was hanging out in a seedy bar, hunched over his second drink.

He’d tried to cheer her up, but Rose had remained quiet, sitting on the jump seat and watching her feet swing back and forth rather than laughing at his piloting antics. Even when he’d announced their stopover, she’d done little more than nod. He thought for sure that telling her it was dangerous and that she was to stay in the ship and wait for him to return would get a rise out of her. Instead, she was complacent, muttered something about making tea, and told him to be careful on her way out of the console room.

That was not his Rose.

He wanted to say something but all he could manage was her name. She looked back and threw a smile over her shoulder, saying she was just fine. He knew that tone. It was the same one he gave her every time he was just fine, which of course meant he was absolutely not fine. He watched her walk down the hallway, warring with himself over whether or not he should go after her. When she disappeared around the corner he considered the decision made.

In hindsight, he was pretty sure that was actually the wrong decision.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Doctor tilted the short glass against his lips and swallowed the last ounces of liquor, letting just a smidge of the alcohol slip into his blood stream. He caught the bartender’s attention and rattled the ice around his empty glass. A moment later a fresh drink was placed in front of him.

There was a cough next to the Doctor as the stool was pulled out and a grizzled old man sat down. He took a wheezing breath and barked into his sleeve. The Doctor looked at him sideways and considered moving, lest he bring back something nasty like the Flovian flu.

Eventually the elderly man settled and ordered a drink. He down the contents of the glass in two gulps then turned to the Doctor and smiled. His clothes were tattered and stained, and he was missing at least half of his teeth. One eye was nearly closed from a scar that ran from his forehead to his chin, and the Doctor was fairly certain he’d smelled piles of garbage more pleasant.

The gnarled little man looked the Doctor over and asked, “So what brings you to this less than fine establishment? Business? Pleasure? There are some lovely ladies on the next level up who’ll do anything for the right price.” Then he waggled his bushy eyebrows in the most abhorrently suggestive manger.

The Doctor glared and turned back to his drink.

The old man cleared his throat with a wet, hacking sound. “You don’t need to answer that, I can always tell.”

“Oh can you,” the Doctor said. His tone was as patronizing and sarcastic as he could manage.

“Mmm,” the man replied. “Old Gern Mote understands.”

“Oh do you?” the Doctor snapped.

Gern sipped and chuckled, triggering a lengthy coughing fit. After a full minute, he cured it by taking a large gulp of his beverage, a few drips trickling down his face and adding to the blemishes on his shirt. “It was a woman who drove me to drink.”

The Doctor frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but the wrinkled skeleton of a man continued. “And I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.”

The man’s tone seemed almost wistful, and he stared into the dark, heavy liquid as if he was remembering. The Doctor wanted to scoff at the notion that he’d wandered in to this dingy canteen because of a woman, or that he would ever be driven to drink by a blonde, human female, but the man’s expression gave him pause. He looked into his own glass and saw his own tired reflection solemnly gazing back.

He would find no answers there.

The truth was the events of Pete Tyler’s death, and Rose’s reticence, were weighing on him. It was the first time she had ever asked him for a favor, to use his ship for something intensely personal instead of just another adventure. He should have refused. Going back on someone’s personal timeline like that was against every rule he’d ever bothered to follow, but she’d looked at him with those bright brown eyes and the word no slipped right out of his vocabulary.

He wasn’t sure he could ever deny Rose anything, even before they’d become lovers. Now she was under his skin, in his head and he was in very grave danger of opening up to her in a way he hadn’t done for a very long time. He should be there right now, with a hand to hold and a hot cuppa, distracting her from her melancholy with the same old stories she’d heard a hundred times but still found a smile for. Yet here he was drinking his misery away while she sat alone in the Tardis.

She was far better than he deserved.

Apparently it was as obvious as the nose on his daft old face. He turned back to Gern, but discovered the seat was empty. He looked around the dim room, squinting through the smoky haze, but there was no bent old man to be found.

He shrugged, lifted the glass and gulped the harsh liquid, ignoring the bite of the alcohol and burn in his throat. Then he slammed the empty glass down, tossed a few credits on the bar top and left.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Tardis was tucked in an alcove on the lowest level, just above the engineering and maintenance tunnels. The low rumble of the equipment matched the dull buzz of the alcohol as it slowly worked its way out of the Doctor’s system.

There was no light in the console room, save for the blue green glow of the time rotor. On his way through, he ran a hand around the edge of the console and took a quick peek at the display. Seven more hours, plus or minus an hour to install the replacement part, and the ship would be ready to go. A gentle, sleepy hum slipped into his mind and he smiled, trailing his fingers over a coral strut on his way out.

A moment later he was standing by his bedroom door, totally at a loss for what to say. He looked down at the floor, and noticed there was no light under the edge. It was late by Earth standards and she was no doubt asleep. His palm smoothed over the wood, imagining her lying there peaceful and serene, with that little quirk to her lips he always wanted to kiss.

The urge to see her, to talk to her and make sure she was all right was strong, but waking a sleeping Rose was a risky proposition. He thought about poking around the console, but disturbing a resting Tardis was equally risky. So he decided on a much safer activity and headed down the hall to the library where numerous tomes awaited him, some of which he’d been intending to read for the better part of two centuries.

The ornate wooden door opened with a gentle creaking sound. He stepped inside and was surprised to find Rose, sitting on the leather sofa, the orange glow of the fire illuminating her profile. He let the door fall shut behind him and took off his jacket, laying it over the back of a chair as he moved so stand near the end of the sofa.

“Rose?” the Doctor said quietly. She didn’t move or say anything to acknowledge his presence; she just stared into the flames and breathed steadily. There was an empty wine glass on the small side table. He knew she’d found him this way more than once, and it bothered him that she had adapted his own brand of stoic melancholy.

He sat down at the opposite end and watched her, tracing his eyes over her arms, folded around her mid section, and the lines of her legs, bent to the side and bare under her silk dressing gown. Her hair was loose and fell in waves over her shoulders, and her face was free of the usual layers of cosmetics. He never understood why she felt those ghastly products were necessary when she was already beautiful.

She shifted a little and uncrossed her arms. She rested one on the wide arm of the sofa, the other fell to her side, her hand stretching into the open space between them. His fingers inched diffidently towards hers until he could slip them together. He gave her hand a small squeeze, which she returned, and he finally exhaled the breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.

It didn’t seem like she was mad at him or upset, though he was pretty sure if he kissed her cheek there would be the faintest trace of salt on his lips. He remembered the way she sagged against the wall in the alley, her slender frame rocking back and forth in an effort to hold back the tears. He glanced at her every few minutes, waiting for something to happen or the right words to find their way to into his throat.

They sat like that for a while, in a passable silence, until the fire popped sharply.

Rose sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asked softly. He wanted to be relieved that she had finally spoken, but there was an odd tension between them that kept him on edge. He forced his hand to relax a little, wishing he’d held on to the intoxicated feeling a little longer.

“For not listening to you,” she replied, “and for almost destroying the world.” Then she laughed soft and short. “Never believed I’d ever say that seriously.”

He was a little surprised, and wondered if she thought he was still mad. He had been quite terse with her in the church, even though he hadn’t meant to be, but gaping wounds in time tended to make him that way. Then she had said she was sorry, and he thought it was behind them.

“S’ all right. I understand.”

“You do?” She finally turned her head to look at him.

He could see her eyes were still raw from crying and mentally kicked himself again for leaving. “I think sometimes, if I could go back, maybe I’d find another way.” He stared into the fire, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “Maybe they wouldn’t have to die.”

Rose watched the flames flicker and dance over his profile, casting strange shadows along the angles of his face. He hardly ever talked about the Time War, or his past, or anything before the basement of Henrik’s. Everything she knew was in scattered fragments that slipped out at random times. Sometimes it was the way the wind rustled the leaves of a forest on a planet three million years in her future. Sometimes it was just a way to fill the silence before she fell asleep and he went back to tinkering with the Tardis. She took each one and pieced it together into a puzzle she called her Doctor.

She wanted him to open up, but she had learned the hard way that pushing him and asking too many questions would only drive him away. She had to choose her path carefully. “You can’t go back though, because it’s fixed yeah? Like my dad? It’s something that’s supposed to happen?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, stealing a quick sideways glance at her. “It’s time locked, so I can’t go back even if I wanted to. And if I did –” he paused and looked down at his legs, stretched out over the patterned rug.

“And if you did what?” she asked. He was doing that thing where he would get quiet and stare off into the distance at something only he could see. A part of her wondered what hells he was reliving behind those blue eyes. The rest of her was scared to find out.

“If I did,” he repeated, “M’ not sure it would turn out any better. There would still be too much death.”

Rose waited to see if he would continue on his own. He was still looking at a spot on the floor somewhere while he talked, but he hadn’t let go of her hand and he hadn’t pulled away. “Wouldn’t you run into yourself if you went back? Like we did?”

He chuckled. “S’pose I would. That’d really drive the council spare. Probably make an even bigger mess of things with two of me. Not sure the universe would survive that.”

She squeezed his hand and shifted closer. “You’ve never really talked about it before.”

“Maybe I should.” He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “You should know what you’ve gotten yourself into, and what kind of man I am.”

“I already know,” she said with a smile, and he looked at her like he couldn’t quite believe her confidence. She pushed herself up on her knees and slipped one leg over his lap to straddle him, with her arms looped around his neck. His hands settled at her waist, the thin fabric shifting under his fingers as she leaned in to kiss him.

Her lips were soft but sure, her fingers brushed the hair at the back of his neck as she pushed against him. He tasted the dry sweetness of the wine on her tongue, slid a hand up her back and felt nothing but slippery silk between her skin and his. A groan escaped unbidden as the thought sunk in. As soon as she started, she stopped, sucking greedily on his lower lip as she pulled away.

He looked up at her, dazed and hungry, and wished he knew how she made his mind go so pear shaped. Rose slid off of him and stood up, not caring about the loose tie or gaping front of her dressing gown.

“Where’d you think you’re going?” he asked, reaching for her at the same time she stepped back.

She gave him a sly smile and moved towards the door, holding it open as she spoke. “To bed, if you’d care to join me.”

It took him 3.75 seconds to follow her.

There may not have been any answers at the bottom of a glass, but maybe there were a few to be found under green cotton sheets.  



End file.
